


"RAWR" in Human Language

by guava



Series: Finally, After 1000 Years [8]
Category: Mirai Sentai Timeranger
Genre: M/M, Matchmaking, Silliness with the other Timerangers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-10
Updated: 2019-03-10
Packaged: 2019-11-15 00:25:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18063068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/guava/pseuds/guava
Summary: V-Rex can't fly but he can make an excellent wingman.Set after Naoto loses control of V-Rex due to a Londars plot in Case File 37.





	"RAWR" in Human Language

Once the Londars was out of the way, V-Rex rushed towards the TimeRobo, its metal talons outstretched and its jaws snapping on air. 

"V-Rex, stand down," Naoto said into the V-Commander. 

V-Rex didn't listen. Instead, it wrapped its talons around the TimeRobo and refused to let go. The metal dinosaur emitted a deep, rumbling sound; one that was a cross between the squeaking of gears and the squawking of birds. Even with his helmet on, the distinctive sound echoed in Naoto's ears. 

Naoto undid his transformation and just watched V-Rex without issuing another command. He hadn't heard it make sounds like this since before he had took aim with his gun and destroyed the control device that a Londars had planted on it. Since then, there had been no technical issues as Naoto and the rest of City Guardians used V-Rex to protect their clients, run tests and collect combat data. 

Until now. Naoto was going to give V-Rex another couple of minutes before calling headquarters. Around him, the other Timerangers swarmed, still in suit and having collected the shrunken and freeze-compressed non-human criminal. The whole team was there except for TimeRed. 

"Hey Tatsuya, how much longer are you gonna fool around?" TimeYellow hollered. "The Time Jets got to go!" 

"I know! The Time Jets are moving and pulling me in all directions! It's V-Rex who's keeping the combination together!" 

Somehow, Naoto could hear Tatsuya hollering back. As the only pilot left in the Timeranger's mecha, Tatsuya was trying hard to shake V-Rex off on his own. 

Naoto was willing to double his allowance of minutes to see his machine take down his rival. He didn't bother hiding his smirk as V-Rex toppled TimeRobo backwards and rested both talons on the robot's mid-section. 

"Get up, TimeRobo!" TimeYellow demanded. "Are you gonna let yourself get squashed by some giant lizard?" 

"Shush, you sound like a kid who still thinks his toys are real," TimeBlue commented. 

"What did you say?!" 

Calmly taking a step aside, Naoto put some distance between the two Timerangers bickering over nothing. He needed to get the show on the road, even if it meant calling for reinforcement to drag V-Rex away. Just as he was bringing the V-Commander closer to his mouth, Tatsuya made his move, bringing the TimeRobo's giant hand down on V-Rex's head.

"Asami, what are you--" 

"Okay, okay, V-Rex!" The rest of what Naoto was about to say was drowned out by Tatsuya's voice. "You fought well today! You're a good boy!" 

V-Rex roared, snapping its jaws open and shut multiple times. It did something that Naoto had never seen it done before--it leaned into the touch of the TimeRobo's large fingers, like a dog being petted. More than taken aback, Naoto was concerned that V-Rex's internal circuits had been damaged in the recent fight. 

TimePink thought the same. 

"There could be a malfunction somewhere," she said, voicing Naoto's worry. "You know where to find us if you need to fix it." 

Like that would ever happen. Just because he had saved the Timerangers' hide once and they had saved him once, Naoto wasn't about to be all buddy-buddy with them. His score with them was even, for now. 

Besides, their help could just make V-Rex worse. Tatsuya's petting of V-Rex was getting it spoiled for more, to the point of it wagging its tail back and forth in the air. After a few more seconds of this, TimeRobo wriggled free and disassembled into jets flying in all directions. Thrown off the cockpit, Tatsuya landed on top of Blue and Yellow to form a flailing heap. 

"V-Rex, let's go," Naoto said. 

This time, without a playmate of its size, V-Rex obeyed. As Naoto left the scene with V-Rex, he heard TimeGreen shouting after them. 

"Bye, V-Rex! Bye, Naoto! See you again soon!" 

On board the City Guardians' jeep, Naoto turned around briefly to watch Green wave goodbye at him. Naoto didn't wave back at the only non-human Timeranger who must be a kid in human years. 

'What an ill-matched team,' Naoto thought. 'Unlike their technology, they're nothing to write home about.'

* * *

"What has gotten into you, V-Rex?" 

Though V-Rex was miles away in his hangar, Naoto talked like it was present in his kitchen, stomping around and watching him nurse a can of beer. 

"Don't believe a word that Asami said," Naoto told V-Rex through the V-Commander. "You've been bad. The naughtiest dinosaur I've ever met." 

No growls or whines or any form of reply sounded from the V-Commander. Naoto wasn't expecting one as he spoke into the voice control device. His main goal was to get V-Rex used to not just his voice but the way he spoke; the specific cadence of his speech that was tied to his personality that could not be easily replicated. 

It was a precaution worth taking after a Londars nearly took V-Rex away from Naoto. At the end of that long day, Naoto lay in bed and replayed the moment when his desperate cry reached V-Rex and stopped it from crushing him to death. 

Naoto wasn't about to attribute the last minute turn in his luck to a sentimental 'connection' with his mecha dinosaur. Still, V-Rex somehow knew that it was him speaking, the true owner of the voice that it was programmed to follow. 

If V-Rex was fed with data on the variations of Naoto's voice, it could perhaps be trained to recognize Naoto in case someone else copied Naoto's voice again. So went Naoto's educated guess. He conducted this particular experiment in private without the help of any staff of the City Guardians, keeping President Asami's underlings ignorant about the nature of his insecurities. 

There was no one who'd mock him for seeming as if he was talking to thin air. He lived alone, truly alone now that he had given Tora and Sakura away. It was a better alternative than to risk them being abandoned, as would be the case in an alternate future in which he was killed in action under V-Rex's foot. 

When he lived with his birds, he had grown used to talking out loud to them. Talking to V-Rex wasn't much different and in a way, he had traded caring for his live pets to pay more attention to his mechanical one. 

"The world of dinosaurs became the world of birds. My world is spinning backwards." 

* * *

Handling V-Rex's restlessness would be a lot easier if Naoto could just go down to the pet shop and get a new chew toy. V-Rex had to make do with TimeShadow, the Timerangers' other robot, catching it between its jaws and biting down hard enough to entrap it but not crunching the robot into pieces. 

From the ground, Naoto watched V-Rex play a game of tug of war with TimeRobo over TimeShadow. He barely reacted when Green approached him while Tatsuya and the others remained in the cockpit to continue their struggle to free TimeShadow. 

"Naoto, I think V-Rex might be going through a rebellious phase," Green said. 

"A rebellious phase? That's just for cats and dogs," Naoto replied. 

"V-Rex is a living machine. So you can think of it being like a living being," Green continued, "Though it's not quite like a cat or a dog...maybe more like a resident of Planet Squamatagon..." 

Who or what that was, Naoto didn't need to know. 

"TAKE THAT!" Yellow's voice boomed out of TimeRobo as it landed a karate chop at where V-Rex's head met its main body. 

The impact caused V-Rex to loosen its jaws around TimeShadow with a croak, giving the Timerangers a slight advantage that was spoiled due to infighting. 

"Domon! You don't have to hit so hard--" 

Yellow cut off Tatsuya's complaining right there. "Why?! It's not a cuddly teddy bear or a puppy! It's a predator out to get us!" 

Naoto had to admit that he was right. 

"V-Rex, use your tail to beat up the TimeRobo," Naoto commanded. 

Unlike how it ignored all commands to back off, V-Rex obeyed the order to go wild. Or maybe it just happened to retaliate in a way that matched Naoto's command. Whatever the truth was, Naoto succeeded in keeping up the appearance that he was in control. 

"Why you--"--Yellow cursed, his colourful language muffled by his teammates--"--just wait until V-Rex leaves a steaming pile of radioactive crap in your backyard!" 

The day V-Rex turned out to have animalistic capabilities would be a day that Naoto looked forward to. And when the pile of radioactive crap materialized, he knew just the odd jobs company that he'd hire to clean up the mess. 

* * *

Before TimeRobo could jump off V-Rex, V-Rex turned the Timerangers inside the robot's cockpit into unwilling passengers for a ride towards the wooded areas at the edge of Tokyo. Naoto was left in the dust with his fists clenched and a sense of having been betrayed creeping over him. 

How dare _he_! Naoto chose to blame Tatsuya over believing that a mecha dinosaur had defied him. That's right; it was Tatsuya's fault for taking V-Rex for a horse and using Naoto's machine to power up his finishing blow. 

After giving a swift order for his men to head back to HQ first, Naoto wasted no time to pursue V-Rex and TimeRobo in a jeep. He alternated between looking straight ahead and upwards at V-Rex taking large, lurching steps further away from him. 

Once he entered the woods, he stopped his vehicle and alighted. He walked around the trees, dried leaves crunching under his boots, listening for a shift in the air that would hint at V-Rex's location. 

"V-Rex, come!" Naoto shouted. 

Silence all around. V-Rex wasn't responding to commands to come or to stop; now what? Naoto punched the tree bark nearest to him. V-Rex's 'rebellious phase' could be the result of another Londars' plot and not due to an unseen malfunction. It hadn't been long since they had personally targeted Naoto and they might be doing it again. Naoto doubted that they would care about giving him a breather, even if to lull him into a sense of complacency. 

Maybe Naoto had become complacent. Maybe he should have done other things to keep himself on his toes than spend his evenings talking to a machine that would never like him or understand the concept of loyalty. 

Like the fool that he was, Naoto called out, "V-Rex!" 

"Naoto!" A familiar voice called for him. "Naoto, we're here! Come over here!" 

"Asami," Naoto hissed, though obviously the latter couldn't hear him. 

He traced Tatsuya's calls to a clearing, in the middle of which V-Rex stood still. The TimeRobo and the other Timerangers were nowhere to be seen. 

Seeing Naoto climbing up V-Rex, Tatsuya greeted, "Naoto! We were waiting for you."

"What have you been doing to my machine, Asami?" Naoto demanded to know. "Are you trying to have him for yourself? Cause your father didn't give you enough toys?" 

Tatsuya frowned. "I have no such intention--" 

"V-Rex, shake him off!" 

V-Rex began shaking from side to side. Yet it was Naoto who ended up on the point of being thrown off V-Rex's head when in the last moment, Tatsuya caught him. 

Pain shot up the arm that Tatsuya grabbed; Naoto's arm that he had taken out of a sling two weeks ago. Since nothing major was broken, his arm ought to be as good as new by then, and he shouldn't have recalled the impact of the fall from the cliff into the river which resulted in the injury. 

Tatsuya released Naoto and asked, "Are you okay?" 

"I'm fine, just do as you please," Naoto mumbled, addressing both Tatsuya and V-Rex. 

"Wait!" Tatsuya grabbed Naoto again, this time on Naoto's good arm. "I stayed behind to help V-Rex tell you something." 

"Do you speak dinosaur, Asami? You've become quite the Renaissance man of hidden talents these days."

For a split second, Naoto caught Tatsuya rolling his eyes at Naoto's remark. 

Then Tatsuya flopped on his belly and onto the surface of V-Rex's head and said, "V-Rex says he'd like you to tell him that he's a good boy. The people of the future who made him used to do that all the time and he misses it." 

Naoto wasn't about to buy that. "In case you haven't noticed, it was just about to off me. And you want me to call it a 'good boy'?" 

"That doesn't cancel out all the times he has been a good boy," Tatsuya insisted. "Just praise him like how your mom used to do when you were a kid."

"Like how _your_ mom used to do."

Tatsuya started moving his right hand in circles on the surface of V-Rex's head and went, "V-Rex, you're a good boy, aren't you? Yes, you are!"

He didn't seem to realise how ridiculous he was being, imitating a housewife coming across a dog on its walk in the park.

From within V-Rex, a deep rumbling echoed. V-Rex opened its jaws to release the sound, gently rocking Naoto and Tatsuya up and down. Naoto couldn't deny that this was undoubtedly the behaviour of a pleased animal. A real dog would no doubt be warming up to Tatsuya by now and liking its real owner a little less.

Without really believing that V-Rex could like him less or like him at all, Naoto bent down to do as Tatsuya did. He rested his fingertips on V-Rex's head, the metal warmed up from the sun shining down on them. He wished he was more prepared and hadn't thrown aside his City Guardians cap in the heat of battle. It was his mistake to assume that just as his leadership position afforded him with an endless supply of caps, V-Rex would always follow his commands.

'Stroking' a creature without any fur felt strange, but Naoto did it anyway.

He tried saying the words, "Good boy." 

V-Rex rumbled again, louder than before. This time, Naoto noticed that these rumbles weren't as menacing as the sounds that V-Rex made when it was fighting. He wasn't sure why. 

"See, Naoto?" Tatsuya said. "That's all V-Rex wanted you to do."

"Sure," Naoto replied. "I'm glad I did that before it shits on my rug."

"Don't be mad. V-Rex just wants to tell you that he cares about you, but can't do it directly since he doesn't know human language."

Stepping closer to Tatsuya, Naoto said, "Does it now? Did your friends from the future teach you how to charm machines?"

"Hey now, I won't ask you to give us V-Rex. He likes you best."

Tatsuya turned and laid flat on his back, looking up at Naoto with Naoto's body blocking the glare of the sun for him. Naoto had the urge to step away, but before he could act on it, V-Rex moved from side to side.

Losing his balance, Naoto fell and landed on top of Tatsuya. V-Rex's erratic movements kept him from standing back up; each shift of the dinosaur's huge frame pushing Naoto back down on Tatsuya's chest. 

"See how wrong you are, Asami? This thing is really trying to kill me!" Naoto said. "I changed my mind; you can have him." 

Even with evidence of V-Rex going out of control, Tatsuya remained in denial. "Eh?! That's not possible...I think it's just playing with us. Watch out!"

V-Rex raised its legs one at a time, stomping on the spot. For a few seconds, Naoto was thrown in the air. He closed his eyes, bracing for impact, and felt Tatsuya's arms around his waist. When he dared to look again, he found himself rolled over and beneath Tatsuya.

Tatsuya did not remove his hands from the sides of Naoto's waist. 

"Your waist is really tiny," Tatsuya said. "You should use your pay raise to eat more good food."

That wasn't the first time someone commented on Naoto's thinness. In fact, the City Guardians' doctor had made a habit out of advising Naoto to bulk up after Naoto's regular check-ups. Naoto could effortlessly shrug that off, yet under Tatsuya's lingering touch, he became overly conscious about his body.

"You should save your insults for later and let go," Naoto retorted.

"I'm not--"

At V-Rex lurching forward, Tatsuya held on tighter.

"--insulting you," Tatsuya continued in a single breath."I'll hold on like this so you won't fall over."

"Let go or I'll think you've got a fetish for tiny waists."

"I--"

Whatever Tatsuya wanted to say was drowned out by V-Rex's deafening roar. His whole body pitched forward and before Naoto could wiggle free to avoid being crushed, their lips met.

There was nothing romantic about it, not with both of their eyes open in shock. Naoto couldn't breathe. The seconds ticked by, going past the window of time for Naoto to push Tatsuya off and perform exaggerated disgust at them having kissed.

He didn't want this, not exactly, but since it had happened, he was...intrigued. 

Smiling against Naoto's lips, Tatsuya gently raised himself up and said, "I do, actually. Just a liking."

Naoto needed a moment to recall what they were talking about. While he was processing what just happened, V-Rex stopped moving completely. Tatsuya rolled away, giving Naoto room to breathe. 

"Whatever," Naoto muttered. 

He sat up to survey his surroundings. Nothing had changed; the rows of trees were as green as before and the sky's blue was only dotted with the black of birds passing by. 

'If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?' If a man kissed another man in the woods and no one is around to see...

"Want to stay to watch the sun set?" Tatsuya asked, totally relaxed with his legs stretched out. 

He waited for Naoto's answer while smiling to himself and bringing the toes of his sneakers together, then apart and together again. 

How could he act as if...as if something _good_ has happened. Naoto rapped the surface of V-Rex's head twice to ensure that he'd get a response. 

"I don't get you," Naoto said. "Why do I have to make out with Asami to get you to behave?" 

"Naoto!" Tatsuya gasped. "That was barely making out. Do you want to make out?" 

Much later, Naoto remembered what he had said into the V-Commander after a night of drinking solo--'sunset', 'alone' and Tatsuya's name. 

**Author's Note:**

> "That doesn't cancel out all the times he has been a good boy"--what I want to say when my kitty goes through an 'attention-seeking' phase from time to time. 
> 
> May there be a similar plot for Ryusoulger in which Tyramigo, like V-Rex, play matchmaker for Kou and one of the other Ryusoulgers. Thanks for reading!


End file.
